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Organic Beef Has a Larger Carbon Footprint Than Feedlot Beef | No matter the way it’s raised, beef comes with a steep climate cost (sentientmedia.org)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/environment@beehaw.org
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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I suspect that the transport costs for NZ exports are much higher than the global or EU average because we are really far away from everyone else, also we don't get the bigger more efficient ships.

Also, Canterbury and Waikato share more of the cattle burden than the rest of the country so they'd need a much bigger drop to compensate.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Shipping is generally a lot more efficient per kg than you would think. For instance the article looked at 9000 km boat transportation for beef

    Transporting food by boat emits 23 grams of CO2eq per tonne of product per kilometer. Transporting the 9000 kilometers from Central America to the UK, therefore, emits 0.207 kilograms CO2eq [9000km * 23g per tonne-kilometer / 1000 / 1000 = 0.207 kg CO2eq per kg]. This is equivalent to 0.35% of the total footprint of 60 kilograms of CO2eq per kilogram of beef.

    We could change that to be New Zealand to Iceland (on the complete top of the globe and far away laterally too), but we'd still find it's a small portion of emissions. We'd bump up our distance to 15900 km or so meaning ~1.76x more distance than what they did the math on, putting it at ~0.6-0.7% of total beef emissions. Still not a significant driver compare to eating beef in the first place

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